24Dec 11

An online shop only describable as ‘prepared for a nuclear winter’ has left us with a severe surplus of meat products. Rather fuzzy headed this morning, it seemed to me an excellent time for a bacon sandwich. Other Half didn’t get downstairs in time to intervene in my more experimental cooking tendencies, however, leading to me deciding that just yr regular meat and bread wasn’t sufficient for this level of fine dining.

Fortunately it turned out to be an excellent breakfast, so if you’re feeling the worse for the season tomorrow and the mere idea of what follows doesn’t make you boak perhaps it is a thing you would like to put in your mouth.

STEP ONE:
This was actually well pre-sandwich, when I decided that studding two clementines with cloves and dusting them with all spice, then heating them in the oven, might make the house smell quite nice. This does work but then set me thinking that the inside of the oven was now infused with a fog of lovely smells

Also pictured: seasonal pyjamas

STEP TWO:
Find some bacon. In my case this was an easy case of opening the fridge and having one of a stupid quantity of packets fall on my face.

As the goal was to cook said bacon in the oven and all my baking trees were covered in biscuits, I made a little tray out of silver foil; the benefits of this method are not having to wash anything up. I put the bacon on the impromptu tray, added black pepper and some dribbled black treacle:

And then I awarded myself a second Michelin star

STEP THREE:
Bacon in the oven, leave it there for the length of time it takes your other half to finish wrapping your presents. I cooked it in the ‘grill’ position, at about 160 degrees so that it would get infused with as much of the rising clove and citrus smells as possible. Did this work? Who knows, it smelt good.

Meanwhile, I got some bread and did the bit of this that I suspect might leave a lot of people’s blood running cold:

-Get two slices of wholemeal bread (nb: must be wholemeal, white is too sweet for this) for each sandwich eater
-Spread cranberry sauce on one slice
-Spread brandy butter on the other
-Add sliced tomatoes on top of the cranberry sauce- if I’d been thinking I would’ve baked these a bit in the tray that had the clementines in but sadly my brain wasn’t working that fast

Shut up this is going to be delicious

STEP FOUR:
When bacon is done to your satisfaction (I left it in until it was curling and crisp) then get it out, slap it on the tomato-ey slice and cover with the brandy butter slice. Cut in rough halves and garnish with your choice of Christmas flotsam:

Of course one should always at least part-peel chocolate coins before serving

A long-suffering victim of my culinary exploits can testify that these were fucking delicious.

(You could use any meat of course, depending on what you’ve managed to totally overorder)

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